Well; I typed out a big long blog review about The National which I was quite proud of, but then I managed to delete the entire thing. Which is the perfect icing to the cake considering I was having a pretty crappy day and was wondering around this evening with the overwhelming feeling that I wasn’t creating anything at all of lasting worth.

Thanks to a few fast and clumsy fingers, I still have that feeling. And because I put heaps of thought and time into gathering links and providing some interesting insights, you’re not going to get anything else out of me tonight.

I think at this point it’s best to take a look and see if anything positive has come out of today.

I think I’ve mastered the art of making delicious guacamole.

It’s sad, that’s about the only thing I’ve felt particularly proud of all day except for my lost post.

So the last week has seen an upheaval of my normal weekly routines, this is because I’ve moved into a new place. As of Friday night passed, Myself and Conan are installed in Sefton St, Wadestown. Some of you may know the place as Luke and Sam’s old Wellington flat, so those people will know where to find us.

It’s been busy trying to get everything organised that we will need to live (the problem with previously living in a flat which was fully stocked), but it’s all worked out in the end and we even promptly had internet and power sorted. My older brother was a huge help with the moving aspect of things on Friday, lending his driving skills to our cause. My mum helped out a whole bunch on Saturday by taking me around town to pick up the majority of the things necessary to have a working kitchen.

I still need to get hold of a heater and laundry hamper; for the flat we still need to get hold of dehumidifier and some seating for the lounge area. Currently our lounge consists of a giant pillow, and a not so giant pillow. Otherwise, it’s looking good at the moment.

So once again you need to suffer through my excuses for not giving you a music update (to be fair, the 48 hour Film Festival stole an entire weekend too!). In my next entry I’m going to be talking about an old favourite, Snow Patrol and a band that I’m currently digging, The National. Stay tuned for that in the not too distant future….

Today it was quite difficult to get back into the swing of work. Usually I’m fine on a Monday, but I wasn’t quite with it today. I guess the last couple of weekends have been without a great deal of rest, not really allowing for me to catch up on anything resembling reasonable amounts sleep. I didn’t sleep very well the Friday night just passed and I had to get up before 7:00am for the second consectuitve Sunday in a row. I’ve had shooting for the Winding City Project these last two Sundays. Yesterday was especially trying as it was a lot of concentration and having to keep your energy up for the better part of 10 hours. Not an easy task by anyone’s standards.

I’ve had an interesting experience on the project so far. Intially I had anticipated playing the otherworldly, and more enigmatic Kaellos. However, it became appparent that the project was without two of the major characters, so I took on the role of the slightly more mundane Bram. There were a couple reasons why I favoured the Kaellos character over Bram:

Kaellos is a smaller part and so I felt I would be more confident in being able to achieve what was demanded of me. I also didn’t really have a very clear idea of what Bram was about as he is far more complex and a lot harder to fully come to grips with. I was also concerned about whether I would even be able to faithfully play a character that has a gay romantic plotline.

The primary reason I took on the Bram character was that there was no one else to do it by the time it was planned to get shooting underway. I mean the opportunity to get back into acting would never be dismissed, so it wasn’t like I did it reluctantly.

After 3 relatively successful full days of filming, I’m really glad I have had the challenge of playing Bram. It took a while to even get comfortable with the idea of playing this role, let alone trying to come to grips with portraying a character who, if attempting to sum up briefly, could be described as uncertain. I don’t want to talk about it too much about it for fear of revealing too much about how events and the plot unfolds, suffice to say it’s not been an easy character to try and bring to life.

Which is why I guess it’s been rewarding. I’ve been out of my comfort zone for three whole days and it wasn’t till the end of the Sunday just passed that I actually feel like I’ve achieved something rewarding. We’ve still got a quite a bit to get in the can but it feels like, at least for me anyway, that the really hard yards are over. I’m looking forward to the remaining shots that I have to shoot and trying to be just that little bit more anamated and interesting each time.

Just wanted to quickly say, the green screen set was really awesome, I liked watching myself and Elliot move around in front of it. Mainly because what you get on camera looks nothing like what you are experiencing standing in the middle of an apartment lounge (where the screen was set up).

Obviously, I will have more to report on the project in coming posts, what with all the shooting and rehearsals being full of fun, memorable moments.

It seems as though there have been a lot of events and various things that have happened since I’ve posted last, though I’ve not mentioned any of it on here. So I will cover various things that I’ve meant to write about in slightly less detail.

After the Star Wars game that I mentioned in my previous post, Giffy and an entourage of friends came down and picked me up to take me up to Waiterere. I stayed over the night and enjoyed the small amount of time that I had with my friends and my Sassa. The highlight for me was swimming in the ocean for the first time this summer. It was kinda overcast when we went out, but thankfully I was peer pressured into it. I love ocean swimming, but mostly only when the beaches are unpopulated by other people, except friends. So while I was a bit skeptical at first, the crashing waves and the presence of friends made it really fun.

I also celebrated my first ever Valentines this year, which turned out to be a relaxing and very lovely affair. In every previous year, I’ve been single come valentines day, so it was a real novelty for me. I’ve never really had anything against the occasion like many do, generally I didn’t even acknowledge it as it’s not really an event that single people get much out of. I mean sure, you can spend time with friends, give a valentine to a secret crush etc, but ultimately the kind of expressions and feelings associated with the day are most rewarding for those in an existing relationship.

I enjoyed being able to do a whole lot of little things to treat my special lady. And not big surprises all at once, but things that would reveal themselves over the course of the day. I also received some very sweet presents too and as I had no prior engagements that weekend, it was nice to be able to relax. It was the same weekend where Jenni linked to a page on http://www.asofterworld.com, which is the first time I’d come across it and I spent a couple of hours browsing through all the old posts. There’s something about the images that makes me really fond of it, but I can’t put my finger on what exactly at the moment.

I’ve auditioned for Stagecraft’s upcoming production of Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s easily my second favourite of Shakespeare’s comedies, after Twelfth Night, so I thought it would be fun to put my monkey back in the box that is stage acting and see what happens. It turned out that the Director was running group audition sessions which meant that I actually had *fun* at an audition! Usually auditions are tedious things where you need to prepare a random monologue and perform it cold in front of a scrutinising panel maybe consisting of director, producer and stage manager etc. This archaic form of auditioning is not really conducive to finding people who are best suited for a particular role, so I’m glad it was different.

I was a bit rusty at first and the passgaes chosen were not cut in any form, meaning they were fairly convoluted in places. I still had a lot of fun, especially since Grant and Regan were auditioning at the same time as me. Apparently they have 80 or so people lined up to audition for the show, so the director indicated that no one is guaranteed a role. This was also quite daunting as our audition group were talented, animated and as a whole, competent stage actors. That being said, there is still some hope for me getting role, as only about 20 of the 80 people auditioning were male, which means I’ve got better odds for being offered a role 🙂

We’re going to be trucking through the remaining filming of Winding City, starting this Sunday. I’m a bit nervous about the whole thing and while the projects’ been pretty cool, I’m looking forward to these first episodes being over and done with. The reason being is that we started in November when I liked my hair, but since then I’ve wanted to get rid of this long, annoying, and frankly unattractive do for a long time. I was a bit miffed that all 4 episodes of the show have been written as occurring on the same night, so I need to wait till all the filming is complete before I cut it off

Finally, here’s the intense awesomeness that is White Lion (maybe they are just called Lion?) doing the theme for the original Transformers movie. It’s a must see and must hear for it’s amazing hair metal-ness:

If you’re reading this, likely you know me or I’ve pointed you in this direction some how. Welcome to my new interweb space, the reasoning behind it being that I wanted somewhere spiffy and new to talk about any creative endeavors I’m currently involved with or anything cool and interesting that I wanted to share.

I will still be keeping up to date on my Live Journal activity, but I like this forum as it’s pretty and will encourage me to talk about anything that I’m currently working on or share reviews on rad music, TV/Movies or games that I’ve come across in my travels.